If you have ever been a sales rep for any company, watched a late night informercial or bought a car, you are familiar with the Impending Doom Closing Technique. The concept is simple, “buy now because this offer or our inventory doesn’t last much longer.”
As a sales rep myself, this is a great way to force a customer’s hand, especially when used correctly. If done incorrectly, and the buyer calls your bluff, you look like an idiot. The same way Matt Stockton at Auto Nation Bellevue felt when he told me he had other people interested in the car I wanted, that would buy it if I didn’t. I walked out of the dealership, came back two days later, and bought the same car that was supposedly a hot commodity.
Click the jump to see where I am going with all of this.
Earlier today, Cougfan reported that a pair of in-state high school football recruits who were first offered by Wazzu waited too long to decide and had their offers pulled. I won’t go into the details, as all of them are in the above link, but I do want to talk about the concept as a whole.
After this report came out, the Cougfan message boards lit up with fans and local scouts saying they did or did not like this approach. I personally see it as being incredibly up-front with recruits and have no problem with it whatsoever.
A school can pull a kid’s offer, for a variety of reasons, but generally because the amount of scholarships a team has open at a given position in, each recruiting cycle gets taken by a different commit. Last year we saw Kendrick Van Ackeren of Bellevue High School wait for an Oregon offer, other DBs committed, WSU pulled their offer, and the kid wound up at Portland State.
Recruiting is a dirty-ass game people, and it always will be. We regularly see recruits lock-up their spot with the first BCS offer they get, to save room for them if nobody else comes calling. Not always, but sometimes those commits jump ship as soon as the “grass gets greener”; Bishop Sankey, I’m looking at you.
As I have stated on the inter-webs many times and in many different places, I have absolutely no problem with recruits doing this.
Over on Montlake, Coach Sarkisian uses the impending doom with a lot of their recruiting targets. I’ve lost track of the amount of times I hear a kid say, well Sark told me they wouldn’t hold this spot open forever. While I don’t think it applies in every recruiting situation, this goes to show it also happens at the other in-state school.
Honestly, if a kid wants to be a Coug, I’d take him on my team any day over somebody else who is waiting on the “better offer.” I don’t give a rip if he is from Bellevue, Spokane, Compton or Orlando, if they want to be a Coug, at the end of the day, they will be!
Have a great night, Go Cougs!
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